


Paul's white knight fantasies

by Metabird (wheatear)



Series: Character dynamics [7]
Category: Dollhouse, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Deconstruction, Essays, F/M, Female Protagonist, Hero Complex, Meta, Nonfiction, Objectification, Relationship Study, Spoilers, Tropes, white knight complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23072773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheatear/pseuds/Metabird
Summary: The white knight sees himself as a saviour, but really he's projecting his own issues on to the woman he wishes to protect. A meta essay on the deconstruction of the white knight complex.
Relationships: Beth Childs/Paul Dierden, Paul Ballard/Echo, Paul Dierden/Sarah Manning
Series: Character dynamics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654255
Comments: 10
Kudos: 4
Collections: Buffyverse Top 5, March Meta Matters Challenge





	Paul's white knight fantasies

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted for the March Meta Matters Challenge.

_Dollhouse_ and _Orphan Black_ are both about control and agency, in particular bodily autonomy. The Dolls' minds are wiped so that they can be used as shells for whatever function the Dollhouse's clients want them to fulfil. The clones in _Orphan Black_ are literally patented: their own genetic material belonging to a corporation.  
  
This theme raises interesting questions about objectification and in particular how that affects women. Men and women are exploited in both shows, but the protagonist is a woman and it's through the protagonist that we see the deconstruction of a common dynamic: the **white knight complex**.  
  
The white knight is a male character who fancies himself a saviour and protector of women, or rather of one specific woman who is almost inevitably the protagonist. His desire to save her, however, is far more about him than it is about her. It almost doesn't matter who she is: she only needs to be attractive to him and in need of protection (in his view). Once he's invested, the rest follows, and his view of who she is may not resemble the reality. In fact, he doesn't want it to. It's the ideal of a woman to save he's looking for.  
  
Apparently I'm a sucker for this trope: a lot of my favourite male characters fall prey to it. I especially enjoy it when it's deconstructed. Which brings me to _Dollhouse_, and while I wouldn't describe Paul Ballard as a fave exactly I think it's through his eyes that you really see both the horror and the appeal of the Dollhouse, specifically in his fixation on Echo.  
  
It was largely through Paul that I understood the appeal of Echo, from being a blank slate to becoming her own person. The dolls are all difficult to get a handle on, for obvious reasons, but I got it with Paul and Echo because you didn't need to understand the person that Echo was, you only needed to understand the meaning that she had for him. She was the girl he wanted to save.  
  
Echo in her blank state is the ultimate expression of the male saviour/white knight fantasy, because she's beautiful and vulnerable and he can project anything he likes on to her. Does it matter who she is? Does it matter who Caroline is? She can be anything in his head. She can become anyone. So he becomes her handler and then not only is it his job to protect her, but she's also programmed to trust him completely. It's a bond that we see often between the male hero and the damsel in distress, but _Dollhouse_ exposes it in a very deliberate way by making it _artificial_. It exposes the artifice. The Dollhouse captures the white knight complex in its most stark, naked form. That's why it's so uncomfortable.  
  
You need to have a character like Paul in the show, one of the good guys (as far as anyone in _Dollhouse_ is good, which is not saying very much), in order to show the white knight complex in action. Paul as a character was deconstructed through Echo, and by extension through November as well. 

It's brilliant. Honestly, _Dollhouse_ is an amazing and frankly underrated show. It knows exactly what it's doing with its themes, and as in any good deconstruction of the white knight complex, it doesn't only interpret that trope through its male character, it also asks the question: so, who is the protagonist? How does she assert or gain back her agency? It puts the focus on her, outside of and beyond the role that her would-be knight has given her, and we see this manifested literally in the way that Echo amalgamates personalities to become her own unique person with Paul reduced to a supporting character in her journey.

The same thing happens with Paul Dierden. (...Is it a coincidence that they're both called Paul? IDK, but it tickled me.) _Orphan Black_ uses a different device to expose the white knight complex (and the objectification of women in general), which is the fact that these women are clones. That juxtaposition of them being identical and yet so clearly individual paradoxically makes us appreciate their humanity more. Once we get to know Sarah, Alison, Cosima, etc, we can't possibly see them as anything other than individuals, and so the idea of flattening their characters seems totally absurd.

This, incidentally, is why Paul/Beth vs Paul/Sarah can feel uncomfortable. The show played on Paul's different attitude to the two women in a low-key way throughout, culminating in Paul's final words to Sarah where he expresses his preference for her over Beth. He's perfectly entitled to be in love with one woman and not another, yet something about this feels wrong: this transference from Beth to Sarah feels like it does Beth a disservice, since after all she is her own person.

Like the other Paul, this Paul's initial attachment to Sarah is based on appearances. He doesn't know her; he doesn't even know she's not Beth at the start of their relationship. But the fact that Sarah and Beth are identical makes the comparison inevitable and gives that uneasy sense of transference or projection on the male character's part: is he seeing Sarah as a person in her own right, or is she a replacement for Beth who he thinks he can more easily save?

In the end of course the various clones gain their independence and find each other, and so Paul is a supporting character and a device used to explore the show's themes more than a character in his own right. Both _Dollhouse_ and _Orphan Black_ are therefore stories about female characters rejecting objectification and asserting their individuality. The white knight is sympathetic, but he doesn't determine the protagonist's fate.


End file.
